The senior thesis, the capstone of a Princeton student’s academic experience, has moved further into the 21st century with Thesis Central, a new thesis collection and management tool. Working closely with the Office of Information Technology and the Office of the Dean of the College (ODOC), the Princeton University Archives launched the site on Monday, March 27 in order to begin collecting the theses that are due during the months of April and May.

Seniors will log into the system with their NetIDs, with much of the necessary information pre-populated into the collection form. In fact, seniors will only need to do three or four things after logging in: provide their thesis titles; upload the thesis files (and any supporting files such as datasets or videos); affirm they followed University rules regarding the work; and, if their department requires one, cut and paste their abstracts. Students are also provided a link to the ODOC page should they wish to request any type of restriction.

After departmental and library review, all theses will be available via DataSpace by the start of the new school year. Since its launch in 2014, use of the online database has been very high. Last year students on campus searched and downloaded over 14,000 theses, an impressive number given that the database has not yet reached 5,000 individual theses. (For copyright reasons, theses are not downloadable from off campus.)

See the Mudd Library website for detailed information about the new submission process.